Free, 1994, enamel paint on glass and vinyl press type, 42” x 19 1/4” including frame.

“…or he can change the tempo completely, stunningly, surprisingly, evocatively, as he does in Free (1994).  Here Brooks backpainted onto a sheet of glass 24 different translations of the word "free," often into tongues that the vagaries of history did not permit to celebrate that concept. Brooks gives these people, these Iroquois and Algonquins, these Bretons and Tibetans, these indigenous peoples from Peru, Polynesia, South Africa, Siberia, the Phillipines, and more a final echo, a last declaration of desire into the face of destiny. This, too, is part of the things that words can be, and beneath the soothing sheen of the glass of this piece, Brooks touches meanings that are truly profound. The work of Adam Brooks is both a pointed reminder and a charged celebration declaring that language itself is never free, that it is inexorably encumbered with every aspect of being that humans can possibly wring upon it; indeed, in our care, language and words will always be simultaneously as strong and as fragile as a piece of glass.”

Excerpt from an article entitled ‘Adam Brooks: Only Words’ in Glass magazine by James Yood, Spring 1995.